


Verses from the Keltiad

by Gray Cardinal (Gray_Cardinal)



Category: The Keltiad - Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
Genre: Gen, Meta, Poetry, scholarship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Cardinal/pseuds/Gray%20Cardinal
Summary: No culture in which bards and bard-craft are so highly revered could fail to incorporate poetry into its historical record – nor did it.





	Verses from the Keltiad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosefox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** _Keltia, the Keltiad, and their associated characters are the creations of Patricia Kennealy-Morrison. What follows could not exist without these parent works, and is intended as an homage to and extrapolation from the original material._
> 
> **Note:** _I was rereading the Dear Writer letter for this assignment for perhaps the fourth time when the notes about poetry, most particularly structured verse, leapt out at me. As a longtime fellow fan of rhymed and structured poetic forms, I found I couldn't resist either the invitation or the impulse to take the assignment in that direction. I hope that, unconventional as this is, that it meets with your approval and enjoyment._

**Introductory**

_Sorcha nî Reille | Sarah O’Reilly_

If you’re reading this, you’ve certainly been following the newsfeeds from Keltia since contact was first made almost two years ago.  Since then, there’s been an immense amount of material written and recorded about Keltia, Keltic history, and the recent war specifically for readers and viewers from Earth.  Fortunately, most of the actual newsfeeds and the majority of the documentary accounts have been reasonably accurate.  About the holodramas, however, the less said the better – except to note that 1) the best thing about **_The Stars’ Wandering_** was Becca EagleClaw’s performance as me, and 2) if **_GrailQuest 3500_ ** had actually been made in Keltia, the producers would owe enough in honor-prices to everyone involved to pay for a dozen seasons of the next **_Star Trek_** series.

What’s been missing, though, is the poetry.

I mean, really.  This is a culture that goes out of its way to train bards – granted, poetry is just one component of what Keltia defines as bard-craft, but still.  Out of hundreds of hours of footage, there are maybe fifteen minutes in two of the documentaries in which poetry is even mentioned, let alone quoted, and as far as I’ve been able to find, not one Earthside publisher has seen fit to license any compilations of Keltic verse since trade protocols were formalized over a year ago.

That wants fixing.  What follows is a very small sample, and is heavily biased toward what the Kelts are starting to call the **_Tales of Aeron_** (largely because that’s what I can pull together most easily).  But it should do somewhat to suggest to Earthside readers that Keltia is very much a realm where poetry is not merely expected, but integral.

**A Word on Forms**

Academically minded readers may wonder why nearly all of the examples given reflect poetic forms developed and/or nurtured chiefly on Earth – especially forms not yet in wide use at the time of the Great Migration.  “That was one of the reasons we kept going back to Earth,” says Idris ap Caswyn, Keltia’s current Chief of Bards.  “Lyric and narrative poetry is a great passion of ours, and we sought to learn and preserve as much as we could of the Terran art of structured verse.  And now, as we resume formal contact, it is only right that we make use of forms with which Earthly readers are familiar.”

#

**Sorcha’s Welcome**

_I did not, in fact, write this song – and it is a song, one that started circulating in Caerdroia’s public houses less than a month after the Coranians were driven off of Tara.  Nor do I know who did; so far, the composer hasn’t come forward.  That said, whoever did write it got me absolutely right.  (Reports that I have now started humming the tune more or less constantly whenever I’m at my work-desk are, however, somewhat exaggerated.)_

REFRAIN  
I’ve sat lonely in bars scattered all through the stars,  
as along foreign spaceways I’d roam,  
But it seems that my past has now found me at last,  
For to Keltia have I come home.

I know forty-six words for “good morning”; for “good night” I know fifty-three more;  
There are curses I’d never dare translate, lest I set off a nine-system war;  
Yet I haven’t the words for explaining what I felt from my toes to my hair  
When my combank first spoke up in Gaelic, and extended a welcome most fair. [REFRAIN]

Back on Earth I could boast of my lineage; I was Irish as Irish could be;  
Aye, a pure-blooded daughter of Erin, on both sides of my family tree;  
But the roots I had thought so well grounded held a secret awaiting me still,  
For on Tara I’ve cousins unlooked-for, in the Shining Ones under their hill. [REFRAIN]

Now I’m sworn into Keltia’s service, and my queen bids me call her by name;  
I am growing accustomed to magic; nevermore will my life be the same;  
The Gaelic I once thought a marvel from my tongue now flows smoothly and plain;  
If it’s into a ballad I’ve fallen, then I trust there’s a cheerful refrain.  [REFRAIN x 2]

#

**The Three Traitors**

_There is perhaps no more widely practiced Terran verse-form surviving on Keltia than the limerick.  Many folk will tell you it’s because Kelts are uncommonly fond of just the sort of barbed wit for which limericks are known.  (There are also lots of that_ _other_ _sort of limerick here, too, but a collection of those would be an entirely different project.)_

_Like the ballad above, could be heard at many public houses within the capital within a few days of the Imperium’s defeat.  Popular consensus is that one writer composed all three, but that individual remains unidentified.  
_

_Curiously enough, though limericks often appear to breed like rabbits, no further examples have appeared involving other principals in the war.  Says Morgan Cairbre: “Our wits may be sharp, but our aim must therefore be as keen as may be.  Jaun Akhera was an enemy to be sure, but a respected one, and no sort of traitor.  The Princess of Dôn redeemed herself at the last, and it would take a brave satirist indeed to risk weighing in under such circumstances, immunity to honor-price or no.  As for Talorcan of Fomor, well, he is but little known here in Keltia.”_

**Hugh Tindal**

Take a note from the Terran called Tindal:  
If it’s purest black mischief you’d kindle,  
Take up knitting instead  
Lest you quite lose your head  
When your luck takes a notion to dwindle.

**Kynon of Ruabon**

‘Tis a curse that you’d care to be framing,  
Have a care for the dooms you’d be naming;  
If you dare that it do,  
Why, the odd may come true,  
And you’ve only yourself to be blaming.

**Powell of Dyved**

There’s not much to be said for Prince Powell;  
Of all wit, he achieved disavowal.  
Trap a guest? Ill-advised.  
He escapes; you’re surprised?  
Time for Sidhe-hounds to practice their howl.

#

**Arianeira of Dôn**

_When I let it be known that I was assembling poetry for a printed volume meant for Earth readers, the last thing I expected was for Gwydion – yes,_ that _Gwydion (master bard, recently retired Pendragon, sometime King of Keltia) – to turn up at my office door._

_Still less did I expect these.  “They are my sister’s words,” he said, straight off.  “True it is that she was never known for a poet or a student of such, but they are hers nonetheless.  This is how she wishes to be remembered, and I must and shall see her desire honored.”  More than that he would not say, but I have to suspect a supernatural event was involved.  As events fell out, it would not have been possible for Arianeira to write sonnets such as these while living under Jaun Akhera’s care in Turusuchan -- much less after revealing her role in Aeron's escape.  
_

 

**I: Gwydion**

We neither were the proper sort of twin  
Whose close-matched thoughts flick back and forth with ease;  
You were a rock, content with what’s within;  
I was a songbird, fickle as the breeze.

I was a princess born, with rank my right,  
And what went with it, too, I loved and prized;  
A prince you first became in others’ sight,  
Before you saw your powers exercised.

Between us Aeron, all unwitting, came,  
Her link with you the twin-bond, nothing less,  
That should, I thought, have been my own to claim;  
In silence, long I nurtured my distress.

Then came the chance to snatch what I had lost;  
I leapt at once, and did not count the cost.

**II: Jaun Akhera**

In passion’s grip, my pain and fury hot,  
I sought you, Alphor’s son, and let you in  
That I might rip from Aeron what I thought  
She had from me – my brother and my twin.

By passion’s icy hand, I felled the Wall;  
Aye, cast it down, ripped open Keltic space;  
Plain power was enough; naught else at all,  
Save death, I left behind me in that place.

Yet passion flares and fades, and when it flees  
What’s left is brittle, dull, and prone to break  
As through truth’s eyes its owner looks, and sees  
The awful depth and breadth of her mistake.

This then the lesson, Alphor: trust not hate  
Lest it revert to love and seal thy fate.

**III: Aeron Aiobhell**

O Aeron Queen of Kelts, pray do not weep  
For choices made, when all of yours were fair;  
I followed pathways grim and chasms deep  
Well-knowing who and what awaited there.

You offered friendship, and I saw it not;  
Were kind, and all I saw was duty’s bone;  
The love you would have given went unsought,  
For I’d forgotten how to show my own.

I turned instead to treason; Alphor’s war  
Is on my hands, and yet you still forgave  
My sins – a lesson I could not ignore;  
My own poor life the price, your own to save.

I would have seen it had I been more wise:  
Love sets no limits – it but multiplies.

 


End file.
